By the time she rose for her next breath, Randy had stripped his shirt and was at the water's edge. He waded into the water, eyes wide from the shock of cold. Starlene waved him back. After waiting to see that she was mak-ng steadily for shore, he climbed up the bank, then relieved his shirt and her blazer.
Bondurant had caught up with them by the time Starlene was standing, dripping and shivering, on solid ground. Randy gave her his shirt to use as a towel. Her nipples had hardened from the cold and he looked away.
"What's going on?" Bondurant said, shifting his gaze from her chest to the spot in the water from which she lad emerged.
"Some… man," she said, fighting to fill her lungs. 'He was here under the tree, then he just… walked in."
"A man?" Bondurant said.
"Dressed in a gray gown. Like a hospital gown. I didn't recognize him, so I don't think he worked here. I yelled but le didn't even look up, just went under and disappeared."
"How long ago?" Randy asked.
"Couldn't have been more than four or five minutes."
"Even Houdini couldn't hold his breath that long." Randy went into the water up to his knees, then put his hand over his eyes to shield the sun. "I don't see any bubbles."
"We should call the police or the rescue squad."
Bondurant pushed his glasses up his nose. "A man, you say. Just disappeared into the water."
"Yeah."
"Miss Rogers, you expect us to believe a man would voluntarily walk into water that's not far above freezing?"
"Why else would I jump in myself?"
"The sun off the water could have played tricks," Randy said. "Happens a lot around here, seeing things. You know that from talking with the kids."
"I know what I saw."
She hunched under the warmth of the blazer as Randy waded back to shore. Bondurant raised one eyebrow at Randy, who shook his head.
"This is a very stressful job," Bondurant said to her. "Someone with your limited experience must go through a period of adjustment. The practical applications taught in the classroom are far different from what we have to do inside those walls." He paused, then added, "In the real world."
Starlene gazed across the calm expanse of water. She expected a gray-clad corpse to bob to the surface at any moment.
"We'll say nothing of this." Bondurant turned and headed back toward Wendover.
"I'm not crazy," she said.
Randy looked at the lake.
"I'm not crazy," she repeated.
"Let's go," Randy said taking his shirt from her. "You better change before you freeze to death."
As they rounded the rocks on the far shore, Starlene looked back at the willow tree. Her legs and arms felt leaden, weighted by more than just her wet clothes. She hadn't imagined it. Had she?
Randy put a possessive arm around her. She let herself lean against him, all tan muscles and chest hair.
"I'm not making this up," she said.
"You heard Bondurant," Randy said. "Don't say anything."
"Oh, God. You don't believe me, either, do you?"
Randy didn't reply.
And she'd thought he understood her, that they shared the beginnings of a growing trust. "Randy?"
He faced her and put his hands on her shoulders. "One thing about Wendover is that you're not supposed to ask any questions. The sooner you learn that, the better off you'll be."
She looked into his ice-blue eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"That sounded like a question." He turned and walked up the path ahead of her.
She took one last look at the lake, shivered, then followed.
SEVEN
Dinner was barely recognizable as food. It was served on the same beige fiberglass trays that every other group home used. The beige always bled into the meat and gravy, muted the colors, and made it all taste bland. Could be worse, though. Could be Pepto-Bismol pink.
The dining room was small, but Freeman managed to find a corner table off by himself. Dipes came through the line with his tray and briefly caught Freeman's eye. Freeman looked away to dodge any lingering gratitude.
Just keep on moving. Nothing to see here, folks.
Freeman definitely wasn't in the mood to collect acquaintances. The thing with Deke and the book had been a convoluted act of self-preservation. He wasn't here to serve as Defender of the Weak, Protector of the Innocent. Leave that to the comic book heroes and Dirty Harry. His job was to survive long enough to figure a way to get the hell out, preferably in one piece.
One of Freeman's house parents sat at the table, a couple of chairs down. Randy. He had that weathered, beefy look, the kind of guy who was probably smooth with the ladies until they figured out his IQ was equal to the number on his old high school football jersey.
Freeman concentrated on his mashed potatoes. Powdered. Why in the world did they have to be powdered? It's not like real potatoes were that expensive. Maybe the staff dietitian wanted to avoid the dark spots. You couldn't have specks in your potatoes when you were trying to build perfect people.
Randy leaned toward him. "So, Freeman, what do you think of Wendover so far?"
The dollop of potatoes was too small to hide behind. Randy showed teeth, the kind that could bite through his own leg if he ever needed to free himself from a steel trap. A kindness that could kill if necessary.
"It's fine, sir." Freeman stuck a generous forkful of mystery meat into his mouth as an excuse not to say more.
"You'll like it here. We have a lot of success stories."
And I'm sure you 're about to tell me some of them.
But Freeman was wrong. Randy's fork went up and down as steadily as if he were pumping iron, packing away the beige food and building biceps at the same time. Freeman scouted the room.
Bondurant was nowhere to be seen. No surprise there. A warden could eat with neither the convicts nor the guards. Many of the counselors sat together at a long table. There were no empty seats there, and Freeman wondered if Randy had been forced to sit with him. Short straw gets the loser kid.
At the next table over, a group of girls hunched over their trays, giggling. All except the girl at the head of the table. Her skin was nearly as pale as her ash-blond hair. Black eyes, large and moist-looking, stared down at the plate before her. The food was untouched.
She suddenly looked up, directly at Freeman. An image flashed into his brain, a single word: Trust. He swallowed hard, sending the bland and thoroughly chewed meat toward his inner plumbing.
That was weird. It's not like I was trying to triptrap her or anything.
But she was already staring at her plate again. Freeman took the opportunity to study her face. Even though she was a little sickly looking, with dark wedges under her eyes, she was pretty. Except, thinking of a girl as pretty seemed a little freaky. Prettiness made his heart light and his lungs stiff, as if he couldn't get any air into his body. Prettiness was pretty damned scary. Luckily, prettiness had always stayed a safe distance away. Bogart in Casablanca, wrong place, wrong time, that sort of thing.
He recognized the suffocating sadness in her eyes, though. He'd seen it often enough in the mirror. Maybe she hadn't yet learned how to shut it off, to bury it. But that was enough about her. He didn't want to be caught staring again. And he definitely did not want to fool himself into thinking he'd read her mind when he wasn't even trying.
Across the room, Deke was using his spoon as a catapult, flipping navy beans at some eight year olds. That was a tired trick. Maybe Deke had been here so long that he was behind the times, not up on cutting-edge goon techniques.
Starlene, the counselor who had taken him to the Blue Room when he arrived entered the dining room. She had a towel around her neck, and her hair was wet. She was dressed in a red sweat suit, looking like a generous Christmas stocking. Freeman wondered if there was a gym here and if she'd been working out.